Jacob Holdt travelled across the United States between 1970-1975 chronicling an America that seemed to be falling apart at the seams. His images are a searing indictment of fear and inequality. His method was total immersion with his subject, diaristic, unflinching photographic realism and one of the most harrowing bodies of image and text in modern photography.

In Alabama, this poor old woman of 87 asked me to drive her to Pheonix Arizona. She wanted to go there to die. I helped her to board up the winows in her dilapidated shack outside Tuskegee. She knew she would never return, but did not want local blacks to move into it. She sat the whole way out there with a pistol in her hand, scared stiff of my long hair and beard. She was so weak that I had to carry her whenever she had to leave the car, still clinging to her gun. - Jacob Holdt

When I lived with this 15 year old boy and his mother in Richmond, Virginia, his 13 year old brother lay in hospital, hit in a gang fight by his brother's bullet, which penetrated his head and blinded him. Nevertheless, I followed the 15 year old on his new expeditions in the streets two days after the trajedy. Shortly after he received a 16 year prison sentence, but today he is out and holds a steady job, trying to raise a family. - Jacob Holdt

Hunger in America 1975. Bethel, North Carolina. - Jacob Holdt